


Break

by More11a



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Psychology, Unpopular opinion: I kinda miss Ramsay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 14:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11784642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More11a/pseuds/More11a
Summary: Ramsay and the poetry of cruelty.





	Break

He had nothing – that's how it started. Looking out over the Weeping Water in the sharp cold wind, Ramsay considers how he came from nothing and became someone, and all within such a short time. He should be happy. Other men would be happy. He is not happy. 

He doesn't have what he wants yet – the Dreadfort, the power, the certainty. The respect of the men. 

Bolton's bastard is dead, if anyone were to ask Ramsay, but there are snowflakes in the air now, tiny things like icy needles, and winter is finally coming. Winter brings out the real hearts of men. He is still young, young enough to not really remember the last winter. Old enough to have survived it.   
It takes a heart of stone, or dragonglass, or something entirely harder. 

Ramsay doesn't know if he is there yet. Not all of them cower yet, not all of them know his true face. The Girls still bark and lick his face when he comes into their den. Every once in a while, there is a maid who smiles at him, at his curly hair and comely features.   
Ramsay knows he's not all that. He is stone, withered and beaten like the bricks of the Dreadford, but still standing. He must be. He will be standing longer than anyone, because he knows what it's like to have nothing and then some – and then, after some time, to have all the things he wants? 

Men give him things, and they tell him things, things they probably swore never to say out loud, but he can make them. Ramsay can be the stone that their waves break upon, he can make them sing and dance and do all kinds of tricks if he wants, like little animals in cages. He can thrust the dagger into their hearts when they least expect it – it's a gift, really. He's gifted, and he will make it all the way to the top. 

They will bend the knee, they will crawl before him, lord of the Dreadfort and Lord Paramount of the North. He will know how to make them, and practice makes perfect.   
Other men might not understand the beauty of it, the blood, the screams, the music they make when they die. It's a song in the night that warms him better than any fire. 

He’s got nothing of his father except for his strange colourless eyes, grey one moment, then green, then blue the next, but always pale and cold.   
There are tears in his pale eyes now, tears that he can’t get rid of by hurting Reek, but he can at least try.   
Because Reek rhymes with weak, and Snow rhymes with low, and Bolton doesn’t rhyme with anything, except it fits the frantic beating of his heart.


End file.
